advertising

Facebook is heavily incentivising its advertisers to keep users within the social network, rather than clicking out to their own sites, according to a new report by social marketing agency, TBG Digital. Read more

On the heels of launching a series of new products that has Facebook users spilling more details of their lives online, the company has now announced a series of new ad products that give advertisers more information about their prospective customers and expands the tools advertisers can use to turn users’ ordinary Facebook activities into paid endorsements. Read more

What a difference two years makes. In 2009 my colleague Tim Bradshaw wrote about the advertising industry’s early experiments with augmented reality and the FT printed an AR image on its pages to give readers a practical demonstration.

Facebook’s Carolyn Everson, its vice president of global marketing solutions, put on an impressive display before the admen at the Cannes Lions festival on Wednesday, addressing many of the issues about which marketers have been concerned. Read more

Japan’s antitrust authorities have cleared Yahoo Japan’s plan to rely on Google for algorithmic search results, rejecting complaints from Microsoft and others that the combined service would field as much as 90 per cent of the nation’s search queries.

Japan Fair Trade Commission officials told wire services that they would not block the deal announced in July but would continue to monitor it for any harm to the market. Read more

Seeing as many people already discuss the day’s news on Twitter, we thought it would be an interesting experiment to focus the conversation a little, get the views of people affected by the ASA’s new regime and add some personal perspectives to the coverage in today’s paper.

We tried to examine how successful this attempt to police the web will be; whether it’s realistic for UK-based regulator to reach into such an international medium; how it might affect freedom of speech or the playful nature of social networks, and if you or your company are going to have to scramble to make big changes as a result.

Given the ASA story is partly about Twitter, it seemed an ideal place to start our first #FTchat, which could be tracked on the site using that hashtag.

Since Apple bought Quattro Wireless last year, it has continued to offer that company’s services placing banner advertisements on smartphones even as it ramped up work on iAds, the fancier iPhone-only marketing with interaction and video.

No more. The former Quattro CEO who is now an Apple VP, Andy Miller, told customers this week that Quattro will stop taking new orders at the end of September and devote all its attention to iAds. Read more

A year after Yahoo and Microsoft finally agreed to combine their search efforts, the result is showing up.
Starting this week, natural searches on Yahoo from the US and Canada will begin being “powered” by Bing, the Microsoft search engine. Paid search results are still on track to be delivered by Microsoft this autumn, Yahoo executives said Tuesday, unless quality issues force a delay past the winter holidays.
Most users won’t be able to tell the difference, but the relevance should be better, said Yahoo vice president Shashi Seth. Read more

Delegates are welcomed to the Palais des Festivals by a giant “touchwall” – a 12-foot by five-foot screen by WPP unit Schematic, showing seminars, 3D maps and other interactive goodies.

SapientNitro – the digital agency which caused a stir last year by buying a traditional agency and scooping several awards for its “best job in the world” campaign for Tourism Queensland – has unveiled what it claims (and who could say otherwise) is the world’s first smile-activated ice-cream van. The van dishes out Unilever treats from Ben & Jerry’s and Wall’s to passers-by in return for a photo of a big grin, which is (inevitably) uploaded to Facebook.

As Apple founder Steve Jobs was noisily pitching the company’s soon-to-be-launched iAds advertising network last week, Apple was quietly making sure it could block Google and Microsoft from delivering commercials to iPhone and iPad owners.

Google complained that the rule change would be bad for app developers and consumers, while federal antitrust regulators are examining the switch to see if it runs afoul of the law. But experts said Apple is most likely within its rights, however much competitors and developers fret, and the FT’s Lex column agrees. Read more

A boy lies on his back on a boardroom table in a high-rise office block in Toyko. He pulls out his Nokia, takes a photo of the setting sun – upside down – and sends it to his girlfriend in New York, where dawn is breaking. “Now I know we share the same horizon,” says the voiceover. “My sunset is your sunrise.”

It’s a brilliant Nokia ad – the sort of simple, well-executed idea that agencies charge six-figure sums for. Only this one wasn’t made by an ad agency – it was made by Hiroki Ono, a 23-year-old film student from Yokohama, Japan, who’d never made an ad before. The film, “Feel the globe”, took just two days to make. Read more

There was a certain weariness about Kent Ertugrul, the chief executive of Phorm, as he took questions at the advertising technology company’s second town hall meeting in London on Tuesday night.

The company, which provides technology that matches advertising to web browsers interests, has now gone through more than a year of trying to damp down allegations of spying and violations of privacy. Read more

Skype is expanding its push into mobile with the release of its iPhone application. The move is unlikely to threaten major telecom carriers, but may better position Skype for an eventual sale from parent company eBay.

Even as TV and print advertising shrunk during the recession, internet advertising remained strong in 2008, topping $23bn. Search remained the dominant form of online advertising, but spending on video, while still a small piece of the pie, more than doubled to $734m.

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About the authors

Richard Waters has headed the FT's San Francisco bureau since 2002 and covers Google and Microsoft, among other things. A former New York bureau chief for the FT, he is intrigued by Silicon Valley's unique financial and business culture, and is looking forward to covering his second Tech Bust.

Chris Nuttall has been online and messing around with computers for more than 20 years. He reported from the FT's San Francisco bureau on semiconductors, video games, consumer electronics and all things interwebby from 2004 to 2013, before returning to London.

Tim Bradshaw is the FT's digital media correspondent, and has just moved from London to join our team in San Francisco. He has covered start-ups such as Twitter and Spotify, as well as the online ambitions of more established media companies, such as the BBC iPlayer. He also covers the advertising, marketing and video-game industries. Tim has been writing about technology, business and finance since 2003.

Robert Cookson is the FT's digital media correspondent in London. He
covers digital enterprise in media, from the music industry to local newspapers and social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. A former Hong Kong markets correspondent, he is interested in the interplay
between old media and new technologies.

Hannah Kuchler writes about technology and Silicon Valley from the FT's San Francisco bureau. She covers social media including Facebook and Twitter and the dark and mysterious world of cybersecurity. Hannah has worked for the FT in London, Hong Kong and New York, reporting on everything from British politics to the Chinese internet.

Sarah Mishkin in a correspondent in San Francisco, where she covers payments, e-commerce, and political news on the West Coast. Prior to California, she has worked as an FT reporter in New York, London, Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong, and most recently in Taiwan, where she covered Chinese internet companies, semiconductors, and tech supply chains.